


Black Widow

by Mina Lightstar (ukefied)



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Episode 58, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukefied/pseuds/Mina%20Lightstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the night of his encounter with Ubogin, Kurapika has a rough morning. No substantive spoilers, I don't think, but it's best if you've seen/read up to episode 58. If you've reached the end of the first OVA, even better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Widow

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written/posted 2003.

He'd been preparing for it for years. He'd sworn it would be something he would act out without fail. He'd been stubborn, ignoring the warnings from people who tried to convince him to abandon the quest. He'd passed the Hunter exam, hunted down employment, and learned how to control his Nen. He had done everything in his power to make certain that he would one day be able to accomplish what had become his purpose for living.

Kurapika let the back of his head thump against the door. He hadn't moved an inch. He had remained on the ground by the door since his legs had failed him upon entering his bedroom. It wasn't even locked, but he didn't think even Senritsu would attempt approaching him right now. He was glad for that; he was in no mood to socialize with anyone.

He had come a step closer to reaching the goal he'd set for himself. So why did he feel so empty? Or was "empty" even the word? He did feel hollow inside, but he also felt awful - cold and ill. He didn't consider himself a weak person, but the murder he'd committed - the violent, merciless kill - had set something in motion. /Something.../ He didn't know what. He'd barely managed to make his way back to the hotel suite he and the rest of his party were staying in.

He loathed to go on; what if future encounters with the Ryodan ended in the same fashion? In the end, refusal to disclose information had been the cause of Ubogin's death. The large warrior had decided not to abide by Kurapika's condition, and had paid for it with his life.

But while he didn't want to become a cold-blooded killer, Kurapika's resolution was absolute. He would not rest until the Ryodan had paid for what they had done.

_"...and after that?"_  he could hear his Nen master ask.

After that...he didn't know. If he were going to be honest about it, he would say that he wasn't so sure he'd be alive "after that".

He squeezed his eyes shut, clutched his blue-and-gold tabard tightly in one hand. He wanted to rip off all his clothing, climb into a bath, and scrub the murderous feeling off of himself.

The Ryodan had besieged his people, killed them purely to acquire their eyes. The band of brutal murderers had left corpses in their wake - corpses with eyes gouged out of their sockets. What they had done was unforgivable.

So why did he feel like such a monster for killing one of them?   
  
  


***

 

He repeated his mantra until his throat ran dry. His back ached from his being hunched over on the bed for so long, elbows on his knees. Nonetheless, he continued, until his voice grew far too hoarse for him to even form coherent words any longer.

He raised his head a fraction so he could look at the clothing he'd tossed in the wastebasket of his bedroom. It was torn and soiled, just like him. For a moment, he had the inkling to do something similar with himself, but the thought was gone quickly. /It's not over, yet./ He would never deny accusations that he was "hell bent on revenge," but neither would he stray from the path he'd chosen.

He wanted a bath, but couldn't have one. That would require venturing outside of his room, and he wasn't ready for encounters with the rest of his team. His door was still unlocked, and one of the others had yet to intrude. If he went outside, they might take his appearance as a sign that he was ready to socialize.

So he abandoned the idea of a hot, cleansing shower. Instead, he glanced at the clock, noting the time with heavy eyelids. Rather than bathe, he would give in to another of his body's demands and sleep for a couple of hours. He wouldn't be able to rest as much as he'd like, but if he was going to function normally today, he needed a least an hour or two.

Kurapika slipped out of his tattered shirt and tossed it into the wastebasket. At first, he was going to let his pants join it, but decided to keep them on even though he didn't want to. There was still a chance that one of the others would come to check on him, and... Well, he wanted to save himself the embarrassment.

He slipped under the covers and burrowed into the pillows. His fight was not over, he still had much to do, and the others were surely waiting on his orders.

But first he wanted to sleep and pretend that what had happened...hadn't.   
  
  


***

 

_"When I first saw you, you were sleeping."_

The voice sounded so close, but so far away at the same time. It was right beside him, but echoing, too. It was...almost hollow - and very familiar.

_"I mean, when I first *really* saw you. I'd caught glimpses of you beforehand, but I first laid eyes on you in the cabin while you were sleeping._

_"You sleep a lot, you know that?"_

"Just enough," Kurapika mumbled into the pillow, knowing he wouldn't be heard correctly. He shifted on the mattress, laying his head sideways on the pillow instead of having his face half-pressed into it. He blinked when his eyes adjusted to the lighting of his room. /It was morning when I went to sleep,/ he recalled. Now his bedroom was dark, save for the moonlight beaming in through the windows. The...red...moonlight. /Red...?/ His right hand started to tingle. Kurapika made a weak fist to try and stifle the feeling.

"Like the dead," the voice said, sounding rich and solid this time.

Kurapika shifted again under the sheets. When his thighs rubbed together, skin against skin, he froze and blinked in confusion. He distinctly remembered going to sleep with a pair of pants on.

"Go back to sleep," the deep, lighthearted voice encouraged. "Only vampires wake up to prowl the night," he joked.

That voice was so familiar, and so close. Kurapika was positive it was coming from right behind him. But for the owner of the voice to be that close, he would have to be--

/Ah!/ Kurapika started when a hand curled around his waist, the palm settling against his abdomen as though the place had been meant for it. He twisted around on the bed, rolling over to confirm his suspicions.

Leorio blinked up at him, lazily. "What?" he asked in a drowsy voice. "What's wrong?"

Kurapika stared down at the future doctor in disbelief. "What...? What are you doing?!"

Leorio narrowed his eyes, looking suddenly concerned. "What's gotten into you?" he asked, propping himself up on one elbow.

"*Me*?" Kurapika stressed, watching as the blankets fell away, baring most of Leorio's upper body. He didn't doubt that Leorio was naked underneath those sheets. "*You're* the one who's..." He trailed off, wondering just what had occurred. He didn't remember anything about sharing a bed with Leorio - and nude, at that.

Leorio blinked again, now looking somewhere between concerned and utterly confused. He sat up, the blankets just hiding his lower body, and fixed Kurapika with a probing stare. "Are you all right, Kurapika? You don't look like you're feeling well." The observation was made with a frown, and then Leorio was reaching out, as though to offer some sort of comfort.

"Don't!" Kurapika snapped, far more heatedly than he'd originally intended. He shoved Leorio away with both hands, palms pushing the taller man hard against his chest.

Kurapika was unaware of how much force he'd put into the shove until he heard Leorio's pained grunt. He watched in a state of mild shock as the young medical student tumbled right out of the bed and hit the floor with a loud thud.

"Leorio?" he called, now in the role of the concerned. He forgot about Leorio's nudity - and his own - and crawled toward the edge of the bed to check on his friend. "Leorio?"

The sight was not a pretty one. Leorio was seated on the floor, legs spread out and knees bent. Some of the blankets had followed him down, and were next to his sitting form. But Kurapika noticed those things only in passing. What really caught his attention was the resigned expression on Leorio's face, and the blood.

"Blood," Kurapika murmured, not believing his eyes.

He couldn't see much of Leorio's pectorals or his nipples; they were covered in blood - and the blood was trickling down his chest, dripping onto the carpet.

"Leorio, what happened?" Kurapika wanted to go to him, to wrap whatever wound his friend had received and help heal it...but he couldn't move from his perch on the bed.

Leorio's acquiescent expression hadn't changed, even if there was a degree of sadness in there now, too. "I see how it is."

"How what is?" Kurapika prodded earnestly. His eyes widened further when blood started oozing out of other places on Leorio's body. The redness was coming from seemingly non-existent wounds. "Leorio!"

"I hope it was worth it," Leorio told him. For a moment, Kurapika thought his friend was crying. Then he realized that the liquid pouring from Leorio's eyes was also blood. "I hope you got what you wanted."

"What?" Kurapika felt like someone had squeezed his heart none-too-gently with a fist. He clutched the edge of the mattress until his fingers hurt. The more blood that leaked from Leorio's body, the harder it became to watch. Kurapika bent his head so that he wouldn't have to see it...and saw something much worse.

The white sheet covering the mattress was stained with blood, and the blood was in the form of handprints. Kurapika's stomach lurched when he turned his own hands over to look at the palms.

His hands were covered in Leorio's blood.

"No!" He turned his gaze back to Leorio, who was now literally wasting away, bathing in his own blood. "*No*!"

He broke whatever spell had been cast upon him, and threw himself off the bed. Kurapika didn't know what had happened, but he did know that Leorio was dying - and that it was *his* fault.

The bed was barely a foot or two higher than the floor. The fall took an eternity all the same.   
  
  


***

 

His nose hurt, and he was cold. The impact had been a lot more painful than he'd imagined it would be. Why was the floor so dirty? When he opened his eyes, he saw why.

He was no longer in his hotel room - the room he had apparently been sharing with Leorio. Now he was outside, flat on his face in the dirt. The red moonlight was bathing the entire valley, dyeing everything a dark shade of ruby.

Kurapika pushed himself to his hands and knees and shook the dirt out of his hair. "This isn't York City," he observed, getting a better look at his surroundings. It was vast, empty, familiar... "Oh..." His voice came out as nothing more than a tiny croak.

He was home. The Kuruta valley was the last place he wanted to be. Those sentiments were reaffirmed when *they* started to materialize. It began with one, and then another, but gradually they started to appear so quickly that Kurapika couldn't even keep track.

The corpses were shadowed, their forms blackened in the light of the red moon. It didn't matter; Kurapika knew exactly what they looked like. Each cadaver had a mortal wound, or perhaps a dozen wounds that had eventually been fatal. And each...each was without eyes - not because the eyeballs had sunk into the sockets, but because they had been gouged out.

Kurapika stood up on shaky legs. He turned around in a full circle to try and determine his exact location. He couldn't. How was he supposed to get back? And where was Leorio? /Leorio.../ He swallowed, and decided that the only way he would get anywhere was by going on.

He took a step forward, and immediately tripped over a corpse that had not been there a second ago. When he was up on all fours again, he tried to stand, but found himself trapped. He turned over to see why, and that was when he realized that the corpse wasn't a corpse at all. Not yet, anyway.

Killua only had one arm, and it was that arm that was keeping Kurapika down. The hand gripping his ankle was cold - so cold - and Killua's eyes were bleeding much how Leorio's had been.

"Killua?!" Kurapika's surprise was profound, but his voice wouldn't go any higher than a whisper. "What happened?!"

But the young assassin wasn't interested in answering questions. He ignored the query entirely. "Why didn't you tell us?" he rasped angrily. "That you weren't interested in treating us like equals? Friends?"

Kurapika blinked. "I never..." He'd never considered anything of the sort! Where was this coming from? "Killua, you--"

"We liked you, you know," Killua hissed, his hand tightening for a brief moment. Blood dripped from his face onto the ground. "I liked you, Gon adored you, and Leorio..." He coughed, and the glare he aimed in Kurapika's direction was merciless. "If you didn't really want to be our friend, then why...?"

Kurapika couldn't say he understood. "Killua, what's happening? What...are you talking about?"

Killua gurgled then, and his grip on Kurapika's ankle went lax. Kurapika couldn't bring himself to move, so he watched, hoping fervently that Killua would blink. He didn't.

"Killua...?" Nothing. Kurapika scrambled toward his friend's body, feeling for any sign of life. Nothing. Killua's form was limp and cold. "Killua..."

He backed away from the corpse, crawling on all fours. What was he going to tell Gon? What had happened to Killua - or Leorio, for that matter? As shocked and saddened as he was, he just couldn't bring himself to grieve. He wouldn't be able to until he knew *what* had happened.

"Kurapika?" A soft, hesitant voice.

He knew who it was without even turning around. "Senritsu," he breathed in relief, spinning around and hopping to his feet.

Senritsu was a mere ten feet or so away, huddled in a jacket to protect herself against the wind. She blinked at him, her features contorting into confusion. "Kurapika... What happened?"

He shook his head helplessly. He was hoping *she* would know what was going on. "I..." He took a step forward. "Senritsu, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she told him, looking mildly taken aback at the question. Belatedly, he realized that he must have sounded rather desperate. "What's wrong?"

"Thank you," he murmured to himself. Whatever disaster had befallen Leorio and Killua had apparently spared Senritsu. "Everything's wrong," he called, starting forward to meet her.

When he was halfway to her, she gasped and winced. "Oh," she moaned, covering her ears.

He paused. "Senritsu?" he asked, concerned.

He took another step toward her, and she took a step back. "Why...?" she whimpered.

"Why?" Kurapika asked, trying to go to her. But the closer he came, the further back she retreated. "Senritsu, what's wrong?"

"You're what's wrong," she replied, staring at him. Her expression was horrified, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. "Why...? How come...?" She tried pressing her hands harder against her ears. Her arms were starting to quiver from the strain. "Why is your heart beating like that?" she sobbed.

Kurapika froze. "Beating like...?"

"Make it stop!" Senritsu pleaded. "Please, make it stop!"

"Sen--" He started toward her again, and this time, she turned and ran. "Senritsu! Wait! Please!" he added desperately. When she didn't comply, or even answer him, he broke into a run.

He chased her for a long time, but no matter how fast he ran he never came close to catching up with her. He called her name, asked her to tell him what was wrong, pleaded her to slow down, but all for naught. He didn't know how long the chase lasted, but he went by countless shadowed Kuruta cadavers. He saw them only through his peripheral vision; his eyes were always on Senritsu's retreating form.

The chase ended when he tripped again, this time falling to the ground and rolling several paces ahead. He groaned, wondered if he'd earned any bruises for that one, and pushed himself to his knees.

"That looked painful," someone mused, sounding wounded on his behalf. "You really should be more careful."

Kurapika went rigid. There was no way he could forget that smooth, silky tone. Slowly, he turned his head in the direction of the voice. When he saw that his guess about the owner had been right, he swallowed. "What are you doing here?" he half-demanded.

"Just watching," Hisoka assured him. The magician was sitting on the stump of a tree, one leg crossed over the other. His chin was resting on his palm as he studied Kurapika from a few feet away.

"Why?" Kurapika stood up, wanting to be prepared if Hisoka decided he wanted a fight.

"It's interesting." Hisoka looked him up and down. Then he shook his head admonishingly. "A little cold for that, don't you think?"

Kurapika shivered, suddenly reminded of the cold and the fact that he wore not a stitch of clothing. He rubbed his arms to try and get warmer.

"The moon is beautiful tonight," Hisoka said, aiming his gaze upwards. "So red...so lovely."

"What do you want?" Kurapika asked tiredly.

"I just wanted to see how it all turned out," Hisoka replied, giving him a smile.

"How it all..." Kurapika took a deep breath. "Did you...have anything to do with this?" If he did, Kurapika would kill him. If Hisoka was responsible for Leorio and Killua's deaths, Kurapika would kill him.

"Me?" Hisoka sounded mildly surprised. "No. *You* did it, my friend."

Kurapika's heart skipped a beat. "What?" He blinked, and then Hisoka was gone from the stump.

"Come to think of it," the magician continued, his voice now coming from behind Kurapika, "you're not unlike the black widow spider."

Kurapika made a fist at the word "spider," his short nails digging into his palm. "What are you talking about?" His voice was astoundingly calm, considering the insult Hisoka had thrown his way.

"Female black widows have a habit of eating males after mating," Hisoka explained, as though giving a lecture. "When the male is no longer needed, she does away with him."

Kurapika bit his bottom lip. /No longer needed...?/

"Yum!" Hisoka exulted, throwing his arms around Kurapika's neck. Both of them stumbled a few steps forward. "Sounds delicious, doesn't it?" the magician added, backing off until he held Kurapika at arm's length. "After all, she's only interested in what she wants and needs."

"What are you saying?" Now Kurapika's voice was a little shaky, at least to his own ears.

"I'm saying nothing," Hisoka chuckled. He gave Kurapika a slight shake. "Of course, I might be making you *think* something, but that's not my fault." Then the hands on his shoulders were gone.

"Hisoka--" he started, turning around. He stopped short when he saw that the magician had vanished again. He looked in all directions, wondering if the older man was going to pop up again somewhere. "Black widow...?"

_"Revenge will only make you feel empty."_

_"Why didn't you tell us that you weren't interested in treating us like equals? Friends?"_

_"She's only interested in what she wants and needs."_

"Why did he have to compare me to a spi...der...?" Kurapika blinked, understanding the reference just as his eyes fell on the corpse that had caused him to trip. He took a deep breath, knowing what was probably waiting for him, but needing to look all the same. He started walking toward the lifeless heap on the ground.

He recognized the green clothing, tattered though the clothes were. Kurapika bent down, reached for the corpse's shoulder, and turned it over. Even though he knew what waited for him, to actually *see* it made him feel like the Judgment Chain around his heart had crushed his vital organ.

He was touching Gon's body, the empty shell that remained of the lively, carefree boy. Gon's eyes were still open, but the eyeballs had sunk into their sockets.

"But how did I do it?" Kurapika moaned to himself. He didn't want them involved because he didn't want them hurt. He adored all three of them; how could he *ever* bring himself to cause them harm, in any way?

"Gon," he said softly, touching the boy's cold cheek. "I..." And then he heard it: the erratic beating of his heart. It was loud, unnerving - frightening, even. And he understood why Senritsu had run from him.

_"You're not unlike a black widow spider."_

_"I might be making you *think* something, but that's not my fault."_

A warning, then? Of what he might become if...? He tried to think it through, but he couldn't hear his own thoughts, anymore. The thumping of his heart was so loud, he was sure it could have driven Senritsu mad.

And it kept thumping, and thumping, and thumping...   
  
  


***

 

Knocking. Someone was knocking. Again and again and...

"Kurapika?" Senritsu's voice was muffled. "Kurapika, are you awake?"

Kurapika mumbled something into the pillow. When he realized that Senritsu might not understand it, he raised his head. "I'll be right out."

"Okay." She sounded like she wanted to inquire about something, but left it that. Kurapika wondered if he'd spoken aloud. Surely she would have heard him, if she were listening.

He glanced at the clock, and noted that he had to get up and get back to work. He took comfort in the fact that the dream had been only that: a dream. Gon, Killua, and Leorio were still okay. They were all right. He permitted himself a sigh of relief. Already, most of the dream's details were fading from his mind, making way for more pressing matters.

_"You're not unlike a black widow spider."_

A warning, and Kurapika took it to heart. He swore then and there that he would try to prevent himself from becoming the very thing he hated so much.

He would try his best.

 

 

+end+

 


End file.
